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I am heartily sick of the protest "I don't go to Mass because my parents forced me to go when I was young." OK Son, what else did your parents force you to do?

Your parents forced you to wash before you went out in the morning. Those cruel tyrants made sure that you cleaned your teeth before you went to bed. They dragged you kicking and screaming to school so that you could learn to read - and the teachers collaborated by forcing you to learn the alphabet and put the words together.

To top it all, after looking after your physical needs, they had the temerity to exercise their authority by looking after your spiritual needs and taking you to Mass on Sunday.

If they had neglected to see that you were clean, had suitable clothes, ate some sort of nourishing food, got some education and crossed the road safely, they would have been visited by social services and given a care plan so that you could be healthy and safe.

This video came my way by a correspondent. I know that some of you will roll about laughing while others will feel it is a little disrespectful. I think it is meant in fun so I thought it would be a good thing to post in the Christmas season.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas. May God bless you, your families and loved ones on this holy feast.

I am writing this after having prepared things for the Midnight Mass which is always such a lovely celebration in the parish. A lot of people have helped to get things ready so please say a prayer for them in thanksgiving for their generosity. I'll time this post to go up just after midnight and tomorrow after the parish Masses, I will be with my sister and her family.

Yesterday I went to see "Of God's and Men" which was screened at the Greenwich Picturehouse. The film tells of a Trappist monastery in Algeria in the time before seven of the community were beheaded in 1996 by Muslim extremists.

The performance of Michael Lonsdale as "Father Luc" was outstanding. He was the doctor who looked after local people with patience and kindness, and attended to the bullet wound of one of the terrorists, remarking to the Prior that he had also treated Nazis in his time.

The heroism of the monks is shown against the backdrop of uncertainty in the community. The decision to remain despite the growing menace is only reached gradually but once they are agreed, there is a wonderful scene in which Father Luc brings a couple of bottles of wine to supper the night before they are all taken. He puts on a tape of the dying swan from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and the characters of the individual monks are shown in their faces.

Having been traumatised by dogs biting me in my early childhood I have never been at ease with them. However there are a few exceptions and Oscar is one of them. A better-natured dog you could not find. Here he is in Greenwich Park submitting with holy resignation not only to the snow but to a Father Christmas costume. Happy Christmas old chap.

UPDATE: thanks for information that this is in fact not Greenwich Park but St Paul's, Deptford.

Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona has revoked consent for St John's Hospital and medical center in Phoenix to use the name "Catholic" or to be identified as Catholic. The reason for this decision is set out in a separate notice, mentioning particularly the hospital's being responsible for contraception, sterilisation and abortion.

At the Diocese of Phoenix website, there is the video featured above in which Bishop Olmsted makes a statement and answers questions. Several people have pointed to the answer he gives at about 23'30" on the reactions to him in the Catholic blogosphere. His answer drew applause:I really don't read the blogospheres. I try to pray each day to find my identity in Jesus Christ. I start my day every day with an hour of adoration. I celebrate the Eucharist. I pray morning prayer, midday prayer, evening prayer and night prayer. My identity comes from Christ. Christ is present in his living body, the Church: that's my identity, it…

There has been a clever digital nativity doing the rounds. I didn't post it because some of it was not respectful. The great guys at Igniter Media have done a much better one (see above). I don't go along with every detail (as Protestants, they naturally go along slightly with the hermeneutic of suspicion re. St Joseph) but it is basically a good presentation of the nativity and so I am happy to post it here.

The CDF has issued a note On the trivilization of sexuality; Regarding certain interpretations of "Light of the World"Eschewing the proposition that condoms may be considered as a lesser evil, the CDF states:The response of the entire Christian tradition – and indeed not only of the Christian tradition – to the practice of prostitution can be summed up in the words of St. Paul: "Flee from fornication" (1 Cor 6:18).Indeedy doody. I also agree with Fr Z:I think the main point of this CDF Note should have been published before the book was released. But… spilled milk and all.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has written an article about St Joseph for the Daily Mail today. See: History's greatest male role model and a humbling lesson for feckless fathers today Let me first say that this is a most encouraging article and it is great that IDS has chosen to write on this theme. I agree with much of what he says and my pedantic quibbles should not overshadow the service that he has done.

So let us get the quibbles out of the way. IDS says "I am not a churchman and I am not given to commenting on Christian theology" Since I am and I am, I suppose it is not too surprising that I would take issue with one or two of the comments in the article. I don't hold to the hermeneutic of suspicion in the story of Joseph - the idea that he suspected Our Lady of adultery and that he put her away quietly to save her being stoned to death. As an upright and just man in the culture of his time, he would have been more likely to al…

Robert George is one of the three authors of a paper titled "What is Marriage?" for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. I haven't time to read it at the moment but looking at the abstract, I though it would be worth passing on to you:In the article, we argue that as a moral reality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together, and renewed by acts that constitute the behavioral part of the process of reproduction. We further argue that there are decisive principled as well as prudential reasons for the state to enshrine this understanding of marriage in its positive law, and to resist the call to recognize as marriages the sexual unions of same-sex partners.

Besides making this positive argument for our position and raising several objections to the view that same-sex unions should be recognized, we address what we conside…

The scourge of child abuse, the Synod for the Middle East and the Apostolic visit to the UK were the principal themes of the Holy Father's annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia earlier today.

Pope Benedict quoted the vision of St Hildegard of Bingen in relation to the sins of priests. It is a hard-hitting message:The stigmata of my spouse remain fresh and open, until the wounds of the sins of men are opened. What keeps open the wounds of Christ is precisely the fault of priests. They tear my clothes because they are transgressors of the law, of the gospel and of their priestly duties. They take away the splendour of my mantle because they completely obscure the precepts imposed upon them. They soil my shoes because they do not walk on straight paths; that is, the hard and sever paths of justice, and they also do not give a good example to those subject to them. Nevertheless, I find in some the splendour of truth.The Holy Father goes on to speak of the culture of the 1970s in…

The Emirates Palace hotel has installed a Christmas tree decorated with diamonds and other precious stones with a value of £7 million. The tree is meant to represent the United Arab Emirates' values of openness and tolerance. It has become a bit of an embarrassment for the hotel which has realised that the opulence of the tree may not be considered by people in other parts of the world to be in the best possible taste.

I felt a bit sorry for them. It is easy for people to witter on about "openness and tolerance" but the hotel has at least managed to avoid anyone challenging them in the British popular phrase: "put your money where your mouth is."

Photo credit: Mulier FortisRorate Caeli reports on a conference held in France on the "Extraordinary Form" with the theme "N'ayez pas peur" (Do not be afraid). There are some sensible suggestions from Daniel Hamiche and some reports of experiences in France.

Mgr Nicola Bux was one of the speakers. He remarked that the French Bishops, who are keen on dialogue with non-christians, ought also to dialogue with members of their own flock, and that the celebration of the older form of the Roman Mass should serve to educate people in the celebration of the newer form. He also pointed out that the refusal to allow the Extraordinary Form was a rupture of communion with the Pope. This is a fair comment since the Holy Father has, Motu Proprio, clarified that the older form of the Mass is not abrogated or forbidden.

L'Osservatore Romano has announced that it is to renew its website during the next year (the 150th anniversary of the newspaper.) It is mainly about an agreement with the Spanish newspaper La Razón but includes hints of other possible improvements.

I enjoyed the comment from Paolo Rodari which reminded me of an excellent Italian idiom Era ora. In English this would be something like "about time" but the pithy Italian which would literally be "it was (already) the hour" expresses it in a way that we can't manage so well in English.

Taken in London yesterday. Photo credit: Mike Fleming
Over the past few years, snowfall in winter in the UK has generated a number of clichés referring to how useless we are at dealing with it compared with, say Finland, Canada or anywhere that snow falls ten times as heavily. There is also the one about how silly it sounds to talk about global warming.

Both of these now wearisome saws are met by rebuttals such as saying that we don't have the money or the depth of snow to keep the equipment, or that it is a question of "climate change" not global warming.

Those arguments can run and run, so it is fun to see that A Tangled Blog has dug up a really embarrassing article from the Independent from ten years ago in which climate change experts themselves explicitly went for the short-term hypothesis, blaming the lack of snow for a few years on global warming: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past. The article begins:Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indica…

Congratulations to four new Deacons who were ordained at St John's Seminary, Wonersh this morning by Bishop Kieran Conry. Revv John Chandler (Portsmouth), Daniel Kelly (Brentwood), David King (Arundel and Brighton) and Jonathon Routh (Southwark) are all now in major orders and hope to be ordained to the priesthood during 2011.

Last night there was a holy hour, followed by Compline and Benediction, as an immediate spiritual preparation for the ceremony (the ordinands had just come back from their retreat.) This morning, the seminary celebrated Lauds at 7.30am before a quick breakfast and a lot of jobs to be done by the sacristans, servers, and singers.

Above you can see the altar of Our Lady Queen of the Clergy with the image being incensed for the singing of the Marian anthem. (I expect there will be some photos of the ordination online soon.) Here is a close-up of the image of the Regina Cleri:

Please offer a prayer to her for the new Deacons. I have known them since they began …

On Sunday, in my post Practical charity needed now, I asked for your generosity to help a young girl whose baby was due. I have heard that thanks to donations received from you and from Fr Z's blog, the young lady now has everything that she needs. the pregnancy crisis team who contacted me saidCan't tell you how moved I am with the generosity of your bloggers.

Your bloggers have made this babies first christmas an incredible one. Thank you all very much for your response.

Christmas is a good time for making some charitable donations as well as buying nice things for our friends and families. If you want to support this kind of work, two highly recommended groups are:

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been on a nationwide tour, being venerated in 16 of our 22 Dioceses. The close of the nine week "Novena" was led by Archbishop Nichols at Westminster Cathedral. His Grace prayed the prayer of Pope John Paul II to the Virgin of Guadalupe which he offered at her basilica in Mexico on his first foreign trip as Pope:O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church!, who from this place reveal your clemency and your pity to all those who ask for your protection, hear the prayer that we address to you with filial trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our sole Redeemer.

Mother of Mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come to meet us sinners, we dedicate on this day all our being and all our love. We also dedicate to you our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples; for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we are, o…

I had prepared a post to put up when the Vatican Bollettino announced that the new Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain is Archbishop Antonio Mennini. However, the Tablet has now announced it online so perhaps that is the new channel for announcements of this kind.

Archbishop Mennini, 63, has been Apostolic Nuncio to the Russian Federation since 2002 and was additionally appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Uzbekistan in 2008. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rome in 1974 and consecrated Bishop in 2000. He has also served as Nuncio in Bulgaria. He is pictured presenting his credentials to President Vladimir Putin in the Alexander Hall of the Kremlin Palace.

As a young priest, Fr Mennini was a go-between, enabling communication between the family of Aldo Moro, the Christian Democrat former Prime Minister of Italy, and the Red Brigades who had kidnapped Moro in 1978 and eventually killed him after 55 days in captivity.

Recently, Fr Ronheimer had an article in Our Sunday Visitor regarding the Holy Father's remarks on condoms. Fr Ronheimer has written before on the prophylactic use of condoms.

Ethicist Janet Smith has offered a substantial reply to the arguments of Fr Romheimer. I think that she is quite right in arguing that whatever a person might advise in an individual case out of desperation when someone is determined to act in an immoral way, the translation of that advice into public (or ecclesiastical) policy will be harmful because it will inevitably be taken as an excuse or an encouragement for acting immorally. I agree with her also that the use of condoms by a couple (married or not) is always contraceptive by virtue of the nature of the act, whatever the intention might be.

Several times, Janet Smith argues that these subjects should be debated in professional journals rather than in popular media, so that moral theologians can thrash the matter out. I have some sympathy with this pos…

I have received a message from a group who help mothers who are tempted to have an abortion. Here is the information:This young girl's baby is due in 3 days time and she has not yet got any of the essentials she needs for when he arrives. This girl previously had booked an appointment for abortion but changed her mind and has faced a really difficult pregnancy and has shown incredible courage to keep her baby despite immense pressure to have an abortion. Right now she needs really practical help and money. We are trying to raise at least £1000 for her to get some basic essential and support her and the baby is due in 3 days! Please give generously via Paypal to pregnancycrisisbham@gmail.comOwing to the circumstances of the young lady, the details must be kept confidential but I am happy to vouch that this is a bone fide appeal. If you are able to help, please do. It would be a good Christmas gift to the Lord.

I have just added The Pulp.it to the blogroll. The blog has two updates on normal days and one on Sundays and feast days, giving about a dozen links to stories of interest. I find these sort of blogs helpful to have on the news reader. Congratulations on the clever URL, too!

I thought that an illustration or two might be in order. The above pulpit is from the Church of Our Lady in Bruges. The two below are from Churches in Krakow. Pulpits - good thing!

Last night the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate came to my parish to sing for the Mass of the Immaculate Conception. It was a privilege to be able to pray and sing with them on their feast day. Thanks to Mulier Fortis for the photo.

In my sermon I quoted from the Meditations and Devotions of the Blessed John Henry Newman in which he reflects on some of the titles of Our Lady which are included in the Litany of Loreto. On the title Virgo praedicanda – which means “Virgin who ought to be preached” - he points out that “We are accustomed to preach abroad that which is wonderful, strange, rare, novel, important”, and that the rarest prerogative of Mary is that she is without sin. He explains:[...] she is deserving to be preached abroad because she never committed any sin, even the least; because sin had no part in her; because, through the fulness of God's grace, she never thought a thought, or spoke a word, or did an action, which was displeasing, which was not most pleasing, to…

H/T Jeffrey Tucker at the Chant Café: Multi-Part Music that Reaches to the Heavens where there is also Ockehem's Deo gratis - for 36 voices! I'm not sure whether it is the Deo Gratias for the end of Mass. If so, the celebrant will have plenty of time to say the Placeat tibi meditatively before giving the blessing.

This music is beautiful to listen to but I did wonder mischievously whether it would give choir directors material for some stressful nightmares as in the post title :-)

I was glad to be able to join some of my brother priests today at the Day of Recollection organised by Opus Dei at Wickenden Manor in Sussex and that the weather was such that I was able to drive there and back. (The photo is a view from the house.) I'll not attempt to summarise the conferences of the kindly Father Frank but will pass on to you just one of the insights that stayed with me.

Whatever we do as priests (and, of course, as lay people too) we should try to do with purity of intention. As a priest I may need to do some paperwork, arrange to fix the roof, catechise some children, or take Holy Communion to someone who is sick. In any of these tasks, I should try to work either in mundane or sacred things so as to please the Lord. God gives us the tasks that we need to do. We should do them for Him and not for ourselves.

After arriving home, I prepared for our evening Mass for the Immaculate Conception. More about that soon.

There have been some worrying reports about changes being made at the CDW to the final text of the new (corrected) English translation of the Roman Missal. Although the Ordinary presented by ICEL and approved by the Bishops' Conferences is nearly all unaltered, there have apparently been a large number of changes been made to the propers. On Wikispooks there is a leaked document examining Areas of Difficulty in the Received Text of the Missal. There is also a collection of pdfs giving the entire "Received Text which is the bone of contention.

Il blog degli amici di Papa Ratzinger has run out of space again on account of their having put up 11,000 posts since they started blog number 3 on 11 December last. See today's last post before "arms and baggage" were moved, which includes this sentence:E ora procediamo con lo "switch-off" nella speranza che non si verifichino problemi tecnici che i Lombardi ben conoscono in questi giorni :-)

And now we proceed with the "switch off" in the hope that there will not occur those technical problems which the Lombardis know well in these times :-)Old Romans will enjoy the expression "lo switch-off".

Germain Grisez was Professor of Christian Ethics at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland for 30 years from 1979 to 2009. A high respected moral theologian, his major work is now available online: The Way of the Lord Jesus. There are some clear rules of use in the sidebar but you can print off any of the material for personal use if you wish.

The Way of the Lord Jesus is in three volumes but a fourth is projected, dealing with Clerical and Consecrated Service and Life.

The relics of Blessed John Henry Newman will be visiting St Benedict's Parish Ealing Abbey on the evening of Tuesday 18 January. here is the programme for the evening:

5.15pm: Solemn Vespers
6.00pm :Holy Mass
6.45pm: Veneration of the Relics
followed by food and refreshments served in the Parish Hall
8.00pm :Talk on Blessed John Henry Newman
given by Fr Richard Duffield, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory

Threats of violence from aggressive secularists have forced Cardinal Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid, to cancel an address at the Autonomous University of Madrid. His Eminence was going to speak about "The God who is unknown to 21st century Spaniards." Fr Z, who reports on this, rightly draws a parallel with the cancellation of the Holy Father's proposed visit to La Sapienza University in Rome.

I found it sinister that the Spanish government said that it could not guarantee the cardinal’s security. It may well be a prudent decision, as in the case of the Holy Father, to cancel an event which is likely to be accompanied by TV footage of riot police restraining violent demonstrators. Nevertheless it is one of the most basic functions of a democracy to ensure the safety of people who are going about their lawful business. To say that "we cannot guarantee your personal safety" has long been a tactic of totalitarian governments in the suppression of free speech. …

My MC has pinned me down and got me to agree to singing the preface at Christmas Midnight Mass in the more solemn tone. Actually it didn't take much persuading really; it does seem the right thing to do. The problem is that I have never sung the more solemn tone and need to learn it properly. I have the score and I will be having a run-through with a good singer tomorrow. It would be useful to have a video or an mp3 file to practise with but I couldn't find one just now.

If you know of somewhere on the internet where there is such a video or sound file, please drop the link into the combox or send me an email (blackfencatholic@gmail.com). If you send me a file by email, please let me know whether it can be reposted here for public use.

If you are looking for the same thing yourself, I will update this post as and when something turns up.

It is good to see that the Irish Dominican brothers have a chance to let off some steam innocently with a snowball fight. I did like the way that the older Father used the cloak as a sort of force shield. He held up well against the younger brothers.

The Irish Dominicans give excellent catechesis on Advent and on various other topics (see the YouTube channel irishdominicans). However I suppose this will be the video that goes viral!

We have had a little snow in this part of the world. Not much by the standards of many of my readers in the US, Helsinki and suchlike, but we have schools closed, railway stations deserted, businesses closed and the usual British "terribly surprised" attitude to snow in winter.

One of my families in the parish like to build igloos at this time of year. As you can see above, it is a distinctively Catholic igloo.

Dominic Scarborough has written an article for Catholic World Report Outside the Magic Circle which is subtitled "Tension builds between the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and orthodox Catholics." He looks at the way in which the BCEW presents a common front on every issue, the ostracism of Bishop O'Donoghue, the Soho Masses, the designation of "Taliban Catholics", and the response to Summorum Pontificum. It is an interesting article in that we all know this stuff but having it set out clearly in Catholic World Report is a step forward.

The Irish Province of the Dominicans has put up a new section on their website: "Reason for the Season". This has been set up by the student brothers to give some background for the seasons of the Liturgical year so as to help people participate in the mysteries of Christ's life. There will be more in the period leading up to Christmas.

The Dominicans are formally called the Order of Preachers. It is encouraging to see the great preachers using new media in the service of the Gospel.

Popular posts from this blog

I am happy to pass on the following information concerning the forthcoming Colloquium of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend myself this time, but I pass on the notice with my support and recommendation.
Booking is now open for the Autumn Colloquium of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, which this year takes place at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, from Wednesday 15th till Thursday 16th November.

Speakers include Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, Monsignor John Armitage (Rector of the Shrine at Walsingham) and Father John Saward.

I am trying to pray the Office each day. Should I only use the official breviary or can I use the Little Office of Our Lady?
The second Vatican Council encouraged lay people to pray the Divine Office; indeed the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy encouraged parish priests to see that Vespers are celebrated in Churches on Sundays, something that is quite rare nowadays. So it is an excellent practice for you as a lay person to pray at least a part of the Office. By doing so, you unite yourself to the whole Church in the prayer which Christ offers up as our High Priest. It is rightly called a sacrifice of praise when we pray the psalms to sanctify the hours of the day.

Priests and religious are bound to celebrate the Divine Office every day and must use the Office that is approved for them. Secular priests, for example, must use either the Liturgy of the Hours (the Office that was composed after Vatican II) or the older breviary that was approved before the Council. Lay people who are no…

When I was a student in Rome, I remember going with a priest for Mass in one of the ancient Churches. The priest said that he was going to use Eucharistic Prayer II because it was the most ancient of all the prayers and was specifically Roman, composed by Hippolytus. This was the standard view at that time (early 1980s) but has since been called into question. A number of people have recently mentioned the matter to me and so here are a few notes for you.

In the 19th century, a number of ancient texts were discovered that were similar to the "Apostolic Constitutions", (of which the first modern edition was published in 1563). Among these texts was a document which came to be referred to as the “Egyptian Church Order”. In addition, the Canons of Hippolytus and the Testamentum Domini were discovered.

The scholarly consensus in the early 20th century on the dependence of these documents was that the “Egyptian Church Order” was in fact the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hippol…

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions:

The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgencePope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina. Norm 7 states:To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.”It is worth reading the other norms because …

The first is the most fundamental. Kwasniewski rightly says that it should be engaged before examining any particular principle behind the new lectionary. It is the question of the purpose or function of reading the scriptures at Mass. As he puts it:
“Is it a moment of instruction for the people, or is it an element of the latreutic worship offered by Christ and His Mystical Body to the Most Holy Trinity.”
He affirms that what we may call the doxological purpose is primary.

This question determines any subsequent discussion of what passages are chosen, how they are distribut…